1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a picture processing apparatus. More particularly, the invention relates to a picture processing apparatus, an index creating apparatus, an imaging apparatus, and an index creating method whereby attribute information is detected about a plurality of pictures included in moving picture data or whereby index display screens are created based on such attribute information; as well as to a program for causing a computer to execute the index creating method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recent years have witnessed the widespread use of digital video cameras for recording moving pictures. In the digital video camera, acquired moving picture data is encoded before being recorded to a suitable recording medium such as a DVD (digital versatile disk), a hard disk or a flash memory. From the recording medium, the recorded moving picture data is reproduced and displayed by the digital video camera or by some other reproducing apparatus.
Where moving picture data is to be reproduced for display, the user may wish to have the data reproduced not in its entirety from the beginning but in part starting from a particular scene halfway through the data. In such cases, it often takes time and considerable effort to search the whole moving picture data for that particular scene.
Techniques to bypass the above-mentioned bottleneck have been proposed whereby thumbnails are created from different parts of the moving picture data to be reproduced. The thumbnails thus created provide indexes to specific recording positions from which to start reproducing the moving picture data in question. One such proposed technique is in the form of a reproducing apparatus (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. Hei 11-289517, FIG. 7) which creates a plurality of thumbnails representative of a plurality of scenes in the moving picture data stored on a recording medium. The proposed reproducing apparatus allows the user to select a desired thumbnail, and the moving picture will be reproduced starting from the scene corresponding to the selected thumbnail.